Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 16.djvu/298

 the latter, and bound it well and firmly; and having taken with me some of those minerals and jewels and goods, and of the large pearls that were like gravel, as well as other things that were upon the island, and some of the crude, pure, excellent ambergris, I put them upon that raft, with all that I had collected upon the island, and took with me what remained of the provisions. I then launched the raft upon the river, made for it two pieces of wood like oars, and acted in accordance with the following saying of one of the poets:

Depart from a place wherein is oppression, and leave the house to tell its builder’s fate;

For thou wilt find, for the land that thou quittest, another; but no soul wilt thou find to replace thine own.

Grieve not on account of nocturnal calamities; since every affliction will have its end;

And he whose death is decreed to take place in one land will not die in any land but that.

Send not thy messenger on an errand of importance; for the soul hath no faithful minister save itself.

I departed upon the raft along the river, meditating upon what might be the result of my case, and proceeded to the place where the river entered beneath the mountain. I propelled the raft into that place, and became in intense darkness within it, and the raft continued to carry me in with the current to a narrow place beneath the mountain, where the sides of the raft rubbed against the sides of the channel of the river, and my head rubbed against the roof of the channel. I was unable to return thence, and I blamed myself for that which I had done, and said, If this place become narrower to the raft, it will scarcely pass through it, and it cannot return: so I shall perish in this place in sorrow, inevitably! I threw myself upon my face on the raft, on account of the narrowness of the channel of the river, and ceased not to proceed, without knowing night from day, by reason of the darkness in which I was involved beneath that mountain, together with my terror and fear for myself lest I should perish. In this state I continued my course along the river, which sometimes widened and at other times contracted; but the intensity of the darkness wearied me excessively, and slumber overcame me in consequence of the violence of my distress. So I lay